Weather and Traffic

Drought waning, but cool, dry fall in forecast

The new three-month temperature and precipitation forecast from the Climate Prediction Center. Click on maps for link to original. (Credit: NWS/ CPC)

The long-range forecast issued by the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center on Thursday is callling for a cool, dry fall followed by another very dry winter in South Florida.

Forecasters see a wet second half of September, however, with near normal temperatures. The average high in Palm Beach through Sept. 30 is about 87 degrees and the low should be about 74 degrees.

The long-range forecast would not be good news for the Palm Beach area since we are finally beginning to make some headway in relieving the year-long drought.

“Drought conditions improved over Southeast Florida but remained nearly steady around Lake Okeechobee,” the National Weather Service in Miami said in its drought update on Friday.

Palm Beach International Airport has received 26.14 inches of rain from June 1 through Sept. 15. That’s .09 of an inch under average for the period. But the annual deficit remains dramatic — 13.17 inches. That’s 31.77 inches in the bucket from Jan. 1 through Sept. 15.

“The rainfall that occurred during the first half of September has allowed for the moderate drought conditions (D1) to improve to abnormally dry condtions (D0) over the East Coast metro areas,” the NWS said. Lake Okeechobee area remains D1/ D2.

The lake is at 10.93 feet, 3.62 below normal.

The tropical weather season is far from over, though, and October storms can often be the wettest. In 1999, Hurricane Irene dumped almost a foot and a half of rain on parts of central Palm Beach County. (Hurricane force winds stayed off shore.)

On Saturday, after advisories were dropped on Maria, the tropics were without a storm for the first time since Aug. 17, a day after Tropical Storm Gert dissipated and one day before Tropical Storm Harvey spun up in the Caribbean.

National Hurricane Center forecasters, though, were watching a new system off the coast of Africa tagged Invest 97, which was a good-sized continent away from Palm Beach — 4,000 miles. It was moving toward the west and the NHC gave it a 30 percent chance of becoming a
depression, or Tropical Storm Ophelia, over the next 48 hours.

Projected paths for 97L. (Credit: South Florida Water Management District)

Early computer runs show 97L making it to the Leeward Islands or taking a more southerly track into the Caribbean.

“The GFS model does seem to hint at this system possibly affecting Barbados, the Windward Islands and Trinidad and Tobago right around Friday as a tropical storm and entering the far southeastern Caribbean next Saturday before quickly lifting northward across Puerto Rico
and then out into the open Atlantic late next weekend,” Rob Lightbown of Crown Weather Services said in his Saturday tropical analysis.

The Saturday GFS also shows something brewing up in the Western Caribbean at the end of the month and trying to make it into the Gulf of Mexico the first few days of October.

HURRICANE MARIA: The system made landfall in Newfoundland Friday afternoon as a Category 1 storm but damage was minimal. It was the second year in a row that the Canadian island/ province was hit by a hurricane. Last year Hurricane Igor caused major damage.